Nice. Was that released yet or no?

Captain Super Mustache [developer] Nov 8 @ 11:54pm
Dude, it's free trailer. if you look well, you will find out that many impose other people's music. it's a non-commercial use.

Okay.

There's some updated information at the end of the article with a link to an interview by Musical Anti Hero.

LewdGamer[www.lewdgamer.com] (NSFW) managed to track down more sources of Artlight's stolen art.

I'll be honest, I've been contacting every copyright holder I can regarding copyright infringement in these "fake VNs," but most of them either don't care or just ignore messages that aren't in Japanese.

I did the same for BCH Waves' releases, and AFAICT at least one of them was removed for copyright infringement, but Valve just let them remove the infringing image and put the game back up.

I'm not sure if Truth or Dare was removed due to people reporting it for sexual content, or because of the image on the store page from Root Letter (which I emailed the copyright holders about and got a response that they were looking into it).

Unfortunately I doubt any of the affected artists will think it's worth their time and money to take legal action.

Update: another upcoming release from Artlight featuring stolen art.

Even if they don't have the time/manpower/budget to make graphics themselves, there are so many sources for creative commons/public domain artwork, and so many ways to work around minimalist graphics with music and writing, that the only excuse is laziness.

https://steamhost.cn/search/?publisher=Artlight%20Studio

University Life:
compare vs original[wallup.net]

Train Journey: review with links

https://steamhost.cn/search/?publisher=R-Novel%20Studio

Daddy's Girls: compare vs reverse image search[www.google.com]
multiple comparisons linked by another user[wx1.sinaimg.cn]

Family Secret: seems like they wised up to the problem and cropped the images more so it was harder to do a reverse image search. GJ

Two more VN "developers" who think Google Image Search is a totally legit source for artwork and are cheeky enough to praise the artwork on the store page.

One of R-Novel's games was already removed pre-release, but they claim it will still come out on the 10th. Here they are straight up admitting that they stole artwork.

At this point I almost want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Steam lets other visual novels made from stolen assets onto the store, so how could they possibly know it's not okay?

Originally posted by Mellow_Online1:

The reason Valve supposedly gave was the removal was in response to excessive DMCA claims being filed against Berdyev's games

I'd be interested to know Valve's definition of "excessive."

(NSFW link) https://www.lewdgamer.com/2017/10/27/lewdgamer-expose-sakuragame/